Sunday drive

Welcome to this week’s Reno News & Review.

Margot and I took the kids up to Virginia City over the weekend. It was just a fun little end-of-spring-break day trip—a short Sunday drive, followed by a stroll along C Street’s boardwalk and then dinner at the excellent Cafe Del Rio.

Virginia City is nearly exactly the same as I remember it from visits when I was a kid, starting more than three decades ago. Of course, the folks up there would like you to believe the city hasn’t changed much at all since, like, 1880, so I guess the short distance back to, say, 1990 isn’t that surprising.

There are more Trump bumper stickers there now, and many of the pedestrians were walking around staring at sci-fi phones, but other than that, the place looked much the same as it did back in Ye Olde 1990s.

On the way up Geiger Grade, we stopped at the lookout point that overlooks the valley below. That view looks a lot different than it did when I was a kid.

As I’m sure I’ve mentioned in these pages before, I spent my teen years in Virginia Foothills. Back then, it was a relatively isolated neighborhood—a few dozen homes nestled up against the Virginia Range along the eastern side of the valley floor. We were half way between Reno and Virginia City, which always felt like some kind of metaphor.

There was basically no development between our neighborhood and Rattlesnake Mountain. There was no Double Diamond neighborhood, no Damonte Ranch High School, no Home Depot, no Walmart.

Now, from that perch along Geiger Grade—or even just by looking at, say, Google Maps—it’s possible to see how the city has stretched south, filling in all the gaps.